The Eire St. Patrick's Day Social

Last week was Eire’s 25th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Social.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since Eire hosted its first party in their first year of business. This party has become an Eire tradition. Not only is it a celebration of Eire’s Irish roots, more importantly, it’s a reminder to our clients, vendors and associates that we appreciate everything they’ve done throughout the year to contribute to Eire’s success. It’s also a great opportunity to see a friendly face that you haven’t seen in a while or finally meet that person you’ve only talked to on the phone or communicated with through email.

So whether you’ve made it to one of our parties or haven’t had the chance, Eire would like to extend our appreciation and gratitude to each and every one of you. And be sure to join us next year. You won’t be disappointed.

“St. Patrick’s Day is an enchanted time – a day to begin transforming winter’s dreams into summer’s magic.”  – Adrienne Cook

The Right Combination

 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a designer is having the opportunity to create and work with different color palettes. The majority of our clients have style guides, with specific primary, secondary, and sometimes tertiary color schemes used in different combinations to reinforce their brand.

Occasionally we will have the welcome challenge of having to generate a color palette or scheme for a new branding or collateral project. I love working with color and I especially love finding different color combinations that compliant each other and might also be visually surprising when their unique relationship works.

Years ago I came across a website that created color palettes from an image uploaded to the system. I thought it was so cool to see what colors and accents the generator picked out of any given image. Whether you're designing marketing creative, or just trying to pick out some new accent pillows for your living room, playing around with a palette generator might be a unique and fun way to get some inspiration.

When I did a search to see if I could find the site again, I noticed there are many sites doing this now. There's also a website that will take the color codes from a palette generator and turn them into commercial paint color codes!

I used Color Explorer to create mine, but click here for a list of palette generators. Have fun exploring!

Um, seriously?

Here at Eire we don’t produce flashy, sexy TV spots.  (We actually don’t produce any TV spots!)  But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to critique the spots I see.  As a direct marketer, I always wonder how effective the ads I have seen are - general advertising can’t give you the quantitative results us DMers crave.  And I marvel at the ads I see that don’t actually feature the product they are selling.  One example is Walter E. Smithe, a Chicagoland furniture retailer.  This family owned business, run by three brothers who I believe come up with the commercial ideas themselves, are always producing spots that tie to current events in the Chicago area.  They are always entertaining, tend to feature someone or something recognizable, and RARELY feature the furniture.  Here are a couple of examples:





The lip sync spot brings to mind a recent Geiko spot.  I love the “popular  middle school girls” who follow this guy around to…  help him loose weight?  Again, I’m entertained but not sure how it ties to car insurance?  Sure the save message is there but:



I’m not saying that these ads aren’t effective.  In fact, they’ve clearly made an impression on me. I just wonder how we can get our clients to have a little fun like this! In the meantime, we’ll just keep doing what we do best, and let the flashy, sexy agencies sell their products without really selling them.

4-Color Digital Printing Just Took a Giant Leap Forward

Study after study shows that personalization and 4-color printing will improve quality and response of your print communications. In the “old days,” technology limited how cost-effective 4-color personalized printing could be for longer run applications like direct mail and other customized communications. Now things are a whole lot easier—and a whole lot more colorful.

With new roll-fed inkjet digital printers, high-run, complex, four-color variable printing is a very doable thing.

Multiple messaging. Tons of versions. Oodles of 4-color images, graphics and type. Different brands. Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. Here are just a few ways the new capability will bring value to your organization:

• Increase response on direct mail by adding 4-color graphics/highlights
• Flexible graphics and message management
• Quicker time to market than traditional workflows
• No pre-printed web rolls to inventory and manage
• Co-mingle small runs with large runs for manufacturing and postage efficiencies – not to mention environmental friendliness

Whatever your area of focus, it can benefit from high-powered customized 4-color communications. For more information, check out the Canon Océ ColorStream 3500.

Pinterest Phenomenon

By now, most everyone has heard of Pinterest and the phrase “Oh, I found this on Pinterest” is becoming as popular as “I saw on Facebook…”. It’s hard to believe that Pinterest was actually launched almost two years ago, but it wasn’t until the last six months that it started getting noticed. According to an article on cnn.com, unique visitors to the site grew 400% from September to December 2011 (I was one of those unique visitors during that time, and have since turned many of my friends on to the site).

I will admit that at first, I didn’t understand the hype or the concept, but now, I love Pinterest. I wonder what I did with all of my time on the weekends before I was baking and crafting things that I’ve found on the site. Pinterest is an online network of virtual pinboards. Pinboards can be created by “pinning” images you’ve found on the web to your Pinterest account or by browsing other users’ pinboards and re-pinning items that are interesting to you.

At a New Year’s Eve party at my house, the food table was covered in multiple Pinterest recipes (brought by different guests), and my centerpiece on the table was designed from an idea I saw on Pinterest. I recently got engaged, and I’m not sure how people planned weddings before Pinterest. I visit the site at least once a day to get ideas on colors, flowers, bridesmaid dresses, menus – you name it, someone has pinned it.

I wonder how Pinterest will hold up in the future with so many social networking sites out there – will it become a Facebook with extreme staying power? Or will it be one of those sites that someone mentions in a few years that you think “oh yeah, I vaguely remember when that was popular”? For me, I hope it’s the later, because I just cannot get enough of it.

Multicultural Marketing

Multicultural marketing is becoming more, well, multicultural!! Most of my clients have become more interested in diversity over the years as multicultural marketing becomes status quo in marketing, rather than just a late, extra addition to a plan. Last week I was in a meeting where we were discussing nuances among distinct ethnic groups especially in Chicago. Here are some interesting facts I learned:

• The digital divide with African Americans is shrinking – not because more African Americans are getting home computers, but rather due to the growing popularity of smart phones.  
• Also due in part to smart phones, social media has become a major factor in how African Americans communicate and expect to receive information.  
• Latinos typically have more family members living in their home, which means they consume products differently – for example, they may have multiple refrigerators in their home.  
• Often Latino households have someone up all hours of the day and night due to alternate work schedules (shift work, etc.) so they consume more electricity than the typical household. 

But there is more to multi-cultural marketing than Latino and African American audiences. You may have seen, like I did recently, this interesting fact on Taxi TV. Chicago has the largest Polish-speaking community outside of Warsaw.  The Polish community also has its own characteristics. Because electricity is so costly in Eastern Europe, many Polish immigrants are already used to reducing their energy use, such as turning off the lights (and heat) in unused rooms or running the dishwasher or vacuum cleaner at night.

These are just a couple examples of cultural nuances seen within the diverse communities in Chicago. We are in an age where micro-marketing campaigns and localized, one-to-one communications have become standard components of any consumer marketing plan. Consumers have come to expect messages that are not tailored to their particular needs.  Not considering these variations may have an impact on the success of your consumer marketing initiatives.

The New/Old Media

I recently read a very informative article on “19 tips for Building an SEO Strategy for Ad Agency New Business" by Michael Gass, michaelgass@mailvresp.com.

As a veteran of the Direct Marketing business I have often thought of the similarities of the DM business and the Internet or Web-based businesses. They both speak directly to the consumer or selected audience based on the products and services that they want to market or sell to. The audience identification, which is the backbone of all successful marketing campaigns, is crucial in the Internet or Social Media world. Some other similarities that I noticed in this article by Michael Gass are outlined below. Using today’s terms I have highlighted related terms that apply to my business training.

Benchmark – Know what your current page rank is and continue to monitor it with tools such as Alexa and the Google Tool.
Corresponding DM Term – Control Package or Response Rate for the Control Package.

Blog Refer Log – Visitors to your site and where they are coming from.
Corresponding DM Term – Response Analysis.

Meaningful title and/or a descriptor statement. 
Corresponding DM Term – Teaser copy on an outer envelope.

Domain Name.
Corresponding DM Term – Product title or what your company does.

Fresh Content.
Corresponding DM Term – Interesting copy!

The more I learn from this new media the more it makes sense. It sinks in when I am able to relate it to what I already know – the trick is being open-minded enough to see the power of this new/old media. The one item that I am totally enamored with is the viral nature of this new media. I don’t ever recall a person sending along a direct mail letter or a free-standing insert to me.